on the changing patterns, problems, perspectives, and policies of legal and illicit drug use. Offering a unique focus on the social contexts in which drug usage, drug-related problems, and drug policies occur, it presents theoretical and descriptive material drawn from both ethnographic and quantitative sources.The American Drug Scene, Sixth Edition, features forty-two selections that cover all abused drugs--amphetamines and methamphetamines, opiates, marijuana, cocaine and crack, hallucinogens, and "club drugs"--as well as such legal substances as alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drugs. Other topics include gender and addiction; cross-cultural research into drug use; the relationship between drugs, violence, and street crime; the symbolic meaning of drug taking; injection drug use; the social construction of drug problems and moral panics; prevention and treatment; and the drug legalization debate.The sixth edition includes thirteen new articles that address recent and emerging patterns of drug use and policy debates, including crystal methamphetamine abuse among gay men; MDMA/ecstasy and the club scene; anabolic steroid use by bodybuilders; medical marijuana; prescription opiate abuse; the relatively recent use of khat in the U.S.; and salvia divinorum use among college students.

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